Superconducting ceramic oxides are a recent technological breakthrough with promising applications in a wide range of areas. Superconductors are materials which transmit electricity without resistance loss and can sustain high magnetic fields when cooled below their superconducting transition temperature, T.sub.c. The new class of superconducting ceramic oxides (sometimes also called superconducting mixed metal oxides or superconducting metal oxides) exhibit superconductivity above the temperature of liquid nitrogen, 77.degree. K. (-321.degree. F.), at ambient pressure, which signifies the ability to prepare and maintain superconductive materials now in virtually any laboratory. This is a tremendous advantage since the only presently commercially viable superconductor materials are those cooled with liquid helium, which is expensive and difficult to handle. However, even using the superconducting ceramic oxides, it is difficult to produce large, mechanically stable, complex shapes. The superconducting ceramic material is brittle, hard and difficult to handle without damaging the ceramic, and is particularly difficult to form into a wire or fiber which would be desirable for high current applications. For small scale applications (such as for microcomponents for electronic devices) low current carrying superconducting ceramic materials may be made in the form of single crystals. However, the technology for making large single crystals suitable for high current industrial uses is not yet practically available.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of manufacturing superconductive fiberformed ceramic composites which exhibit superconductivity at liquid nitrogen temperatures, which do not require high temperature consolidation of the superconducting metal oxide powder, and which can be produced in large complex shapes at relatively low cost.
It is another object of the present invention to provide novel superconductive fiberformed ceramic composites which exhibit superconductivity at liquid nitrogen temperatures.
These and other objects of the present invention will be apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments of the invention, the appended claims, and from the practice of the invention.